Fake call centre in Udyog Vihar busted; four held

The police on Monday night busted a fake call centre that had been operating out of a building in Udyog Vihar for the past four months and arrested four people

The police on Monday night busted a fake call centre that had been operating out of a building in Udyog Vihar for the past four months and arrested four people. According to the police, the call centre employees have been allegedly duping US citizens by posing as officials of law enforcement agencies and threatening to cancel their social security numbers if they failed to pay a fine. This is the fourth such call centre to be busted by the police and ninth this year.

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According to the police, the call centre had duped at least 800 people based in the US. The police said they used to buy data from Delhi every month.

A case was registered on Tuesday at Udyog Vihar police station under sections 420 (cheating), 120B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC) and sections 66D and 75 of the IT Act against the business partners of the call centre.

The suspects were identified as Ranjeet Singh Rana from Udaipur, Rajasthan and Bhavesh Pankhi from Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The police said two team leaders were also held from the spot. The police said the three partners were running the call centre and that they had prior experience in working for call centres in Gurugram.

The police said the suspects were paying ₹1.5 lakh as monthly rent for their office in Udyog Vihar. The suspects were produced before the district and sessions court on Tuesday and were taken on police remand.

The police allegedly recovered seven hard disks, a script meant to dupe people and computers from the call centre.

KK Rao, commissioner of police, said they received a tip-off on March 1 that a group in the city was running a fake call centre. It took the police a few days to locate the place. “We had conducted an internal investigation and our teams raided the office on Monday night. We will get the recovered hard disks scanned along with their systems to get an exact number of people duped by the call centre,” he said.

The police said the confiscated hardware will be sent to a laboratory in Madhuban, Karnal, for forensic examination.

Rao said that there were 35 men and four women working as telecallers in the call centre. The executives were given US citizens’ data. They used to make random calls, informing them that their social security numbers are at risk of being cancelled as they are “offenders” and need to pay a fine to ensure the continuation of the same.

“This call centre was set up with 40 workstations. The telecallers underwent a week’s training to make calls to the US, and a script was shared with them. They had also set up a toll-free number, which was shared with the victims,” he said. The police said the payment was generally through virtual payment gateways, credit and debit cards, gift cards, iTunes cards, etc.

The police said the exact number of victims and the amount of money siphoned may be higher than anticipated.

The suspects used to provide pick and drop facility to all the employees and were paying ₹20,000 a month as salary and nearly ₹35,000 as an incentive for duping US citizens.